Commercial Real Estate

Overview and Courses

This program provides learners with the knowledge and skills they need to understand the integral components of the commercial real estate business. Participants acquire a robust overview of the development process, project planning and management, investment and financing decisions, property valuation, property management and the cycle of tenancy, and real estate asset management. Ultimately, you will obtain practical guidance and analytical tools to enhance your career and improve your ability to develop successful real estate projects. Familiarity with Microsoft Excel is strongly recommended.

What You’ll Earn

Commercial Real Estate Certificate from Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

Successful commercial real estate developers are master coordinators, working with multiple counterparts every step of the way to create and maximize value through real estate projects. To do this, they use a thoughtful, organized process—regardless of project size. This course offers a deep dive into the crucial early stages of that process. Using analytical tools and case studies, you will learn how to align your development vision—and subsequent decisions—with industry cycles, municipal objectives and regulations, market and site characteristics, and projected financial feasibility.

Real estate development projects have many moving pieces; the project manager guides and aligns resources to bring those pieces together into a coherent, financially successful whole. To develop critical project management skills, you will work through a case study and learn how to think like a project manager with guidance from Brad Wellstead, experienced former real estate development project manager and Cornell University faculty member. The practical tools and techniques you learn will allow you to confidently create a project schedule, set a realistic budget, and effectively manage resources, risks, and people.

Real estate investment has a long history, going back well before the advent of the stock market. But unlike investing in stocks, real estate usually requires the use of leverage: a property is acquired with a percentage of equity, the rest financed with debt. To make that risk pay off, investors must have a clear strategy, know whether investments will be profitable, and understand how best to raise capital. In this course, Jan A. deRoos, professor at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, uses real-world examples and practical tools to teach these critical components of profitable real estate investment.

Real estate investment is a popular way to accumulate wealth, but you don’t have to be rich to get started. That’s because there are many ways to finance real estate investments to raise the equity you need and structure debt beneficially. In this course, you will explore both sides of the financing equation to understand what equity and debt partners want, how to structure financing for a high likelihood of approval and rate of return, and how to perform analyses that are critical to success. Not only will these analyses upgrade your skills, the sophisticated spreadsheet tools you use can be applied immediately to real-life opportunities.

Investing in proper management of a real estate asset is investing in future profitability. Excellent maintenance and tenant management can increase property values by lowering operational costs, increasing cash flow, and generating higher rents and occupancies. In this course, you will learn leadership traits and strategies for effective facilities management, best practices in critical areas like waste removal and reducing environmental impact, and how to manage overlapping maintenance activities and make outsourcing decisions. If leasing building space is critical to your operation, this course also will prepare you to analyze your property and the market to make sound leasing decisions.

As real estate asset manager, you are steward of an owner’s property, responsible for managing it to help achieve the owner’s goals and increase its value. To guide you in this challenging role, you need a comprehensive road map for decision making: the Asset Management Strategic Plan. This course focuses on teaching you how to build this strategic plan and on developing your understanding of the asset manager role, its activities, and different management approaches. Beyond best practices and expert insights, this course also provides you with ample opportunities to practice new skills and an applied toolkit for real-world real estate asset management.